Places You Wish Hadn't Changed Names

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1. Saigon, Vietnam (Ho Chi Minh City)
2. Lourenco Marques, Mozambique (Maputo)
3. Upper Volta (Burkina Faso)
4. Salisbury, Rhodesia (Harare, Zimbabwe)
5. Burma (Myanmar)
6. Canton, China (Guangzhou)

The current name of the location is in the parenthesis. What about you geography buffs out there? Any of you know of places whose names you wish hadn't changed?

Thailand (was Siam)

All those Eastern Euro countries that used to be known as White Russia.

Istanbul (Constantinople)

Puttin on the ritz...

New York= New Amsterdam...

I put my vote in for all the sports facilities that changed their names to take advantage of advertiser dollars.

Which countries are you referring to?

Maybe he means Belarus, Magic. I just looked up White Russia in Wikipedia and Belarus was the only country listed for that. Also probably the Ukraine too.

oh i'm not really sure, I thought it had a wider application than just one country, like a line or a 'front'...this is the only reference i can find to substantiate that notion:

"The name "White Russia" is a literal, although not entirely correct translation of the name "Belorussiya" from Russian. The problem with this translation is that the original word "Belarus" means Bielaja Rus', that is White Rus' (White Ruthenia), not White Russia. And therefore the name "Belarus" is not really related to the modern Russia, but to the ancient lands of Ruthenia (Rus')."

"Ruthenia is an old name of the region which roughly covers modern-day Belarus, Ukraine, and very small portions of western Russia, eastern Poland and Slovakia."


from wikipedia

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_Russia



...and to add to the list

Prussia (I'm no expert, but nowadays, part Germany, partPoland, part Russia?)

Persia (now Iran)

United Kingdom = 51st State of the Union (satire ed)

St. Petersburg - Leningrad

Czech Republic - Czechoslovakia

Serbia and Montenegro - Yugoslavia

Michigan Territory - Territory Northwest of Ohio

OK I'm running out of ideas

Los Angeles Dodgers - were the Brooklyn Dodgers

Hey, if New York can have someone wish it was New Amsterdam...

And the story behind it is sad. I know the Mets replaced them in many fans' hearts, but I'm always kind of nostalgic for the days when Brooklyn had their own team, even thought I've never been there; just one of my little quirks.

Thailand was great when it was Siam because you could get some great humor out of it. There's the person who tried to teach Siamese on the new Howdy Doody Show once, in what was probably an old joke when the original Buffalo Bob was a pup - "Owa Tagoo Siam" (oh what a goose I am); and of course this type: "Do you know where you're going?" "Yes, Siam." "I know you're going, but where you headed?"

Instead of a Siamese cat the politically correct form would be a Thai Cat

I Thai my shoes!

As a person who is not from Western culture, I think that you should know that the 'old names' of those places were colonial/Americanized names. They were given their *original* names back, the names that folks who lived there have been using for thousands of years. Like the Russians have always been calling it Leningrad, and it was Americanized to St. Petersburg. And the comment about Thai restaurants serving cats was distasteful and uncalled for....

Actually, it was called St. Petersburg long before America even existed - its name was originally "Russified" to Petrograd during the First World War, and then changed to "Leningrad" a few years later in Lenin's honour (obviously), before reverting back to its historical name post Communism-collapse.



Yes indeed it was.... Cheap cliche (especially racially offensive cheap cliche) is not to be encouraged here I don't think.....

I agree. While the remark was unlikely to have been intentionally offensive, I can understand why you found this distasteful Tali. An apology perhaps chadmaster?

Dunc